Fully homomorphic encryption provides the ability for a third party to carry out computations on encrypted data without having to first decrypt the data. This form of encryption allows users to store their private encrypted data on, for example, a remote server, while enabling the data storage facility to process the encrypted data. Fully homomorphic encryption lends itself well to a cloud-based computing environment.
While offering great promise by preserving privacy for data owners, operations involving encrypted data are nevertheless computation-intensive.